Stars & Stripes Up, Trees Down

While for 99% of America Memorial Day means hotdogs, hamburgers and a beer... for the Boarmans it apparently means heavy machinery, sweating and chainsaws.  We are the 1%!  For the 2nd Memorial Day in a 3 year time span, I walked into an orange-equipment-filled work zone unknowingly.  You would think I would learn, wouldn't you?

Ryan & I both happened to have the Friday before Memorial Day off so we headed up to the lake to get the holiday weekend kicked off early.  Mamacita was working and Papa Bear was allegedly working from home.  After we unloaded the truck, Ryan was whisked outside by my Dad.  I figured my Dad was undoubtedly either showing off the progress of their garden OR showing Ryan some crazy new nail gun that can also roast s'mores or something.  Approximately 5 minutes later I wandered outside, beer in hand, to find them like this:

You and me, kid - we're going to really freak your wife out.  (That's the conversation I imagine was taking place).

It was at that moment that I was struck by 2 thoughts - 1) my Dad's definition of working from home differs slightly from mine and 2) uh-oh.  I proceeded to watch what was happening to try to use context clues as to what they could be doing.  Let's see if you can figure it out along with me, shall we?

Based on this picture you might think the end goal is to cause a divorce.  I kind of was.

This picture might lead you to believe the goal was to help my Dad live out his life-long dream of seeing if he can scale an entire tree if given a head start.

Aha!  They're cutting down a tree.  (This tree was dead by the way- this was not just a random attack on the flora & fauna of Lake Conroe.)

Ryan was obviously an integral part of this portion of the operation.

The peanut gallery next door.

Eventually these Paul Bunyans in training successfully took down 2 dead trees on the lot next door.  I successfully took down 2 beers in the same amount of time as well as photographically captured these memorable moments.  I'd say we were all equally productive, right?

As a bonus, I also took some pictures of my parent's garden.  You may be wondering what my parents are doing with a garden by a lake.  So, little known fact about Jimmy James is that he is a farm-boy.  If you'd ever tried to hold a conversation with him about the IQ of chickens, you may have suspected- otherwise he keeps it under wraps for the most part.  I'm not sure if it was that he was reminiscing upon his youth or that he was trying to convince my Mom that the tractor has several practical applications, but either way  while Ryan & I were on vacation my parents planted a garden.   

Said garden holds every seed they could find at Home Depot, I think.  There are 3 kinds of peppers, corn, several herbs, about 5 kinds of tomatoes, the list goes on and on.  We saw the garden about a week after my parents planted it and it was cool to see how much it had grown in 5 weeks.  It wasn't quite as cool as having my Mom drop by some delicious bell peppers from the garden about a week ago, but still up there.  They plan to plant a pumpkin path there this fall- so I'm sure you can all look forward to pictures of Ryan behaving like a child in a pumpkin patch before the year is over. 

The big stuff on the left is corn.  Knee high by 4th of July is apparently not applicable in my parent's garden.  Perhaps that is just a Hoosier thing.

I was trying to get a close up of some little tiny peppers.  Turns out I'm not so good at close ups. Let's see how good you are spotting them.

On Saturday we decided to be good patriots by spending the holiday relaxing in the water and stuffing ourselves with way too much food.  Jen & Brendan came by to assist in our celebration.  Many spirited games of beer pong, laughs and beverages were shared.  As always, my parents spoiled us with way too much delicious food.

The beasts enjoying the pool before the humans took it over.

She's 1 now- that's like 21 in dog years, right?  (Don't call PETA, I am pretty sure Ryan re-filled his empty beer can with water for Lola-face).

 

Brendan appears to think he just won.  That or we just told him that we'd start paying him to handle our lawn care.

Jen, your face makes me laugh!

Sunday sadly we all parted ways.  Jen & Brendan went to take some holiday furniture sales by storm and Ryan & I had to head home so he could work the day shift on Monday.  Luickily we had enough fun in our 2 1/2 days that we didn't feel cheated on our 3 day weekend.  Thank you VERY much to my parents for generously hosting us- as always you are far too good to us.  Thank you most especially to all of the men and women who serve our country - this country would be nothing without you!